Yipe! I've been remiss in updating.. but, you know how it goes - it's been rather a busy time, and will continue to be for at least another few weeks, in an attempt to implement a new algorithm for a paper submission deadline. It'll be a tough job, but I can but try. It threatens to improve substantially on our current contour fitting, which would likely cut the output data size handily - a good thing, from just about any deployment's perspective.

I'll try to get the pending entry up on Thursday or Friday. There's quite a bit, after all, including something.. rather special.

Anyway. ^_^

In the meantime, what's everyone been making of the current half-season of Doctor Who? Personally, I'll grudgingly admit to being discontented with The Bells, especially considering its origins - not a bad tale, simply.. well, rather without form. What function did the WiFi connections have? If they were just alerts for the Spoonheads to come visit.. couldn't they just randomly pluck people up, and be done with it? What was actually happening to those "uploaded"? What was with the magic bike, versus just tricking their way up? Eh.. no, none of it ruined it, but it just didn't really make for a tightly edited story, where the elements relied on each other, rather than seemingly being chosen for their screen presence. (See also "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship")

The Rings - okay, the pacing felt as if it'd been rather hacked around to get it to fit into one episode, but good grief, it was fun! Beautiful to look at, so wonderfully immersive, and with that theme of the dreadful weight of responsibility, and the justice of such responsibilities in the first place. It sounds like the production team went to extraordinary lengths to pull that all off, and it really shows.

Cold War (so, dear BBC, did you really have to cock up the iTunes encoding and upload just stereo audio on this episode in particular? And what's with that framerate conversion? Okay, that's not as simple a matter as it might seem, but that's just bad) - ahhh. We're back to the days of classic Who. =:D All set in quite a confined set of spaces, and gorgeously shot too, with quite a cinematic feel, albeit with rather overt teal color grading, which is pretty much par for the course. I do wish Christopher Plummer's role could've been a little more prominent, but regardless, an absolute gem of the series. I'd hug him if I could. ^_^ It's good to see another barrier broken, separating that invisible wall that seems to've been set up behind the original run - true, we've had a few other classic villains return, but mostly the iconic Cybermen and Daleks. (Any of the other lesser known ones you'd enjoy seeing come back?)

So - what have you been making of it all so far? (Needless to say, please, elaborate on your thoughts)

Christmas Carol's a beautiful, melancholic tale indeed. Despite its tragic nature, that ending remains so oddly uplifting - and that song, good grief.. you'd have to be frozen solid not to be moved to tearfulness by that.

If only we could see a H2G2/Who crossover, however incidental. ^_^ Still, there's no mistaking DNA's style in what exists of Shada, and a few other episodes he participated in, for that matter. I wonder if the Grand Moff could be talked into making Shada anew.. it'd have to be edited rather heavily, though, if it were to be crammed somehow into a single episode. I rather miss the multi-parters, and even the classic's fiendish use of cliffhangers, with that glorious Radiophonic Workshop electronic howl leading out.. =:9 (And DNA would surely hardly object to an alternate version of a story =:)